Yes, in the wacky world of Outlook 2013 IMAP accounts, the category picker on the Options dialog is disabled on mail, appointments, and tasks but it works on Contacts.Ī user discovered the trick to creating full reminders and color categories on tasks: select more than one. You can even add categories from the options dialog (File, Properties). The keyboard shortcuts work for categories and as with the other Outlook items, once a category is applied, you can right click on it and make changes. In Contacts, all of the flag options are available. Once you add a category to an appointment, you can open the category MRU by right clicking on the category bar in the open appointment. But you can add categories if you assign keyboard shortcuts to at least one category and apply it. The category picker is missing from appointments. Whether you can add a category an appointment or contact, or add a category or reminder to a task depends on what view you are using and whether you know all the right tricks. There is no reason why full flags and categories shouldn't work in an ost file, but users are stuck with the IMAP implementation, where flags are limited to on or off and the Categories button is non-existent. If having special 'this computer only' folders with reduced capabilities in Outlook's IMAP accounts isn't bad enough, I'm left scratching my head when I look at the half-removed Flag and Category features users have come to expect in Outlook.

Categories and Flags in Outlook 2013 and newer

Outlook 2016 categories